


Refuge

by VendelynSilverhawk



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: ADD/ADHD, ADHD Character, Domestic Fluff, M/M, Mage Origin, Minor Angst, neurodivergent character, thoughts on mage trevelyan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 10:56:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15604779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VendelynSilverhawk/pseuds/VendelynSilverhawk
Summary: “Do you like me?”He could not believe the words coming out of his partner’s mouth. His amatus, the Herald of Andraste, the dreaded Inquisitor, was wide awake and staring at Dorian and asking if he liked him.“What.”Noah gestured with the hand that bore the anchor, its green light flickering in the dark.“You know. I know you like like me, but do you… like me?”*Dorian stares at Trevelyan, with his wild magic and wide eyes and beautiful mind, and thinks about everything that led them to where they are, and how much he stands to lose now that he's shown his heart.





	Refuge

**Author's Note:**

> My first male inquisitor is Noah Trevelyan, a 24 year-old mage with ADD/ADHD, who literally fell down a flight of stairs because Dorian's flirting was so surprising and flustering to him. It's pretty funny.   
> This story is only a little funny.

It was early enough that the only people awake in Skyhold were insomniacs and the skeleton watch, Cullen’s patrols that watched every inch of the walls for signs of intruders after dark. Even the kitchen staff weren’t awake, and they roused themselves before dawn so they could have everyone fed the moment the great hall doors were opened.

               As Dorian was not a member of the kitchen staff, or one of Cullen’s men, it stood to reason that while the stars were out he should not have been awake. And yet.

               “Do you like me?”

               He could not believe the words coming out of his partner’s mouth. His amatus, the Herald of Andraste, the dreaded _Inquisitor_ , was wide awake and staring at Dorian and asking _if he liked him._

               “What.”

               Noah gestured with the hand that bore the anchor, its green light flickering and subdued without its normal black leather glove, sporting a golden Chantry eye on the back of the palm.

“You know. I know you _like_ like me, but do you… like me?” He stared at Dorian with those green eyes big and bright as a leaf catching the sun, innocent face showing one-part genuine concern and one-part fatigued delirium.

               At the moment, Dorian was all parts fatigue, but somehow a sliver of annoyance managed to thread between the fervent wish for a prolonged and death-like sleep.

               “Amatus. Did you really just wake me, in the middle of the night, in the _bed we are sharing_ , to verify not that I am romantically attached to you, but that I am fond of you as a human being?” he enunciated carefully. Noah blinked. Nodded.

               Dorian turned over and pressed his face against one Orlesian pillow.

               This was the man he had chosen to love.

               “Andraste preserve me. Yes, I _like_ like you. Now go to sleep! I’m fairly sure we’re going to some place with unpleasant weather and an even more unpleasant name tomorrow; we’ll both need our rest,” he muttered into the pillow. Noah made a cheerful humming noise as he shifted so his back was pressed against Dorian’s side.

               “Ok,” his amatus murmured.

               _“Ok.”_ Ridiculous. Dorian probably wasn’t going to sleep for the rest of the night, but Noah was “Ok.” He sighed into the pillow. There were worse problems to have, he supposed.

 

Half an hour later Noah was snoring again, but Dorian still couldn’t sleep, his mind turning. When Noah fell into a dream and started talking, it only got worse.

               “No… please don’t go,” his amatus whispered, words muffled by the pillow as he clenched the sheets against his chest. After a moment of heavy breathing he turned and pressed close to Dorian, forehead resting against Dorian’s shoulder, and let out a small whimper. “Please.”

               Gently, Dorian lifted a hand and started to card through Noah’s golden hair. He usually slept through Noah’s nightmares, which so far no sleeping potion seemed to help, but Noah enjoyed having his hair played with while he was awake, so Dorian hoped it could calm him now.

               It worked. After a few moments Noah sighed heavily, nudged himself closer to Dorian, and seemed to settle. Dorian’s chest was heavy.

               Sometimes he forgot what Noah’s life was like, pre-Inquisition. Southern Circles had a terrible reputation in Tevinter, and while Dorian knew from research and Noah’s own stories that the Ostwick Circle had been relatively relaxed, it was still, in its way, a prison. Noah barely remembered the family that was now grubbing at his doorstep, since they seemed to have decided to pretend he was dead once his magic manifested at the age of five. There were no letters, no visits, yet on the desk across the room were more than a dozen letters from various Trevelyans, including a Lady Alura who claimed to be his loving mother. That didn’t change the fact that she abandoned her son in a place where any relationships at all were detrimental, and the threat of the Right of Annulment was never relieved.

               Someone like Noah was doubly cursed in that situation. Dorian knew that his mind didn’t work like everyone else’s. Sometimes it ran so fast no-one else could keep up with him as he spun words like a dictionary, performed feats of magic that defied conventional teachings, and spent hours without food or rest pouring over his work for the Institution. Other times he could barely concentrate at all, could only work at certain times of the day, or jumped from subject to subject apathetically, none of them catching his attention enough for him to genuinely focus. Dorian could tell which mood Noah was in based on his magic alone. When the Inquisitor was flighty and easily distracted- and therefore almost useless for the day until Leliana figured out that giving him myriad very small, quick tasks could keep him working- there were constant flames snapping between his fingertips. It was almost a tick, one that scared some of the servants to no end when they saw the Inquisitor casually strolling through the great hall with a fireball resting in one hand.

               This innate sense of free-reign that Noah gave his magic must have been a great danger to him in the Circle, where the Templars jumped at every shadow. After speaking with a few of the Inquisition mages who had known Noah at Ostwick, including its former First Enchanter, Dorian had realized that everyone in the Circle thought that Noah was a disaster waiting to happen. He would never choose to be made Tranquil instead of the Harrowing, and the Templars couldn’t force it on him. However, his inability to pay attention for long periods in class, his penchant for playing with magic at any time, and his trusting demeanor all seemed to point towards an easy target for a demon.

               Noah Trevelyan had passed his Harrowing when he was sixteen, in less than two minutes, and whistled as he walked out of the chamber, unaware that every Templar in the room had been stealing themselves to cut down the once-cheerful young man.

               “Amatus,” Dorian hissed. Noah didn’t react, so Dorian shook him gently, utterly unapologetic. “Amatus! Wake up!”

               Noah blinked and opened his eyes, brows furrowing as he stared at Dorian’s shoulder.

               “Hm?” he sighed. They started to droop shut again. Dorian turned so that he was on his side, one hand cradling Noah’s cheek. When he kissed Noah fiercely on the lips the Inquisitor started, looking slightly more awake.

               “I love you. Have I told you that recently? Because I do. Very much so,” Dorian said, quick but intent. The image of Noah walking into the Harrowing chamber alone- what a barbarous process! - and the dark shadow of doubt that said his amatus could have died there, lay like stoned between his ribs, crushing his heart. Why did he always think about these things when it was dark?

               “Um. I love you, too,” Noah mumbled. “Didn’t we just do this?”

               “No, I said I _like_ like you. Not that I love you. But now I’ve said it so we can continue our blissful dreaming.” He said it to himself as much as Noah. As if he could will their dreams to be happy ones. Unfortunately, he was no Somniari.

               If he was being honest, he was surprised that Noah didn’t have _more_ damage from his time in the Circle. He’d met his fair share of traumatized mages since coming here, and the ferocity of the mages still fighting in the civil war was a testament to how terrified they were of having to return to their previous state. Noah, by comparison, seemed to view it as a sometimes sad but ultimately necessary part of his life. The fact that he could have been killed at any moment, or made Tranquil, never seemed to have occurred to him. He admitted that not having friends was hard, but then blissfully informed Dorian that his Circle’s Knight-Captain, Augusta Reynolds, had always been kind to him, so it wasn’t all bad.

               Rudeness or insults directed at him glanced off without Noah even noticing that the person he was happily chatting with had just called his robes ugly, or implied he was incompetent. Amazingly, this inability to notice the terrible things that happened to him seemed to extend to every conversation with Vivienne. What Dorian observed as the senior Enchanter questioning Noah’s abilities, implying he was dangerously reckless with magic, and essentially calling his taste in clothing “sad homeless apostate,” Noah seemed to view as incredibly helpful intellectual conversations with a gracious teacher. It baffled Dorian to no end, and once he even caught Vivienne looking at Noah as if she’d seen a unicorn.

               Such winding thoughts continued into the morning, one of those rare days when they had a few hours to themselves before Josephine found him with the problems of the day. Dorian sat back in his favorite library and watched as Noah, sloppily dressed in a mis-matched gold robe and leather pants, explored a nearby shelved alcove.  

              

 

Inquisitor Trevelyan had always been a picture of uncommon beauty. This gave him favor in Orlesian eyes, which linger and love beautiful things regardless of their origins (and after, the Trevelyans are distantly related to Orlesian royalty, if one goes back far enough), and made him look soft to Fereldans, a people who endure no matter the peril. Josephine said it never hurt to be beautiful, to which Leliana laughed and said “Not always, Josie…” in a voice that said there was a no doubt darkly humorous story to be told one night. Cullen seemed baffled why it mattered at all.

               To Dorian, Noah was like a Chantry statue. Years hidden behind the Circle’s stone walls had given him pale skin like the white stones used to build the great Tevinter libraries, and in the sun his blonde curls shone like gold. His eyes were the color of mountain grass, a fact that delighted him to no end. He was impossibly fond of nature, a fact that no-one had the opportunity to forget, as he was always insisting on cultivating Skyhold’s wild growths, and could barely contain his enthusiasm when they went on missions that would necessitate camping. It was ridiculously endearing.

               It did take its toll, though. As Dorian watched Noah flit about the shelves he couldn’t help but wonder at the transformation. The sheltered, delicate young mage who was called the Herald of Andraste had become a man- the dreaded Inquisitor, his curls growing wild to the point where he had to tie them back, his skin becoming tanned by the sun, new scars all over his body and even on his face, where once it had been flawless as newly-cooled glass.

               Yes. This war had taken its toll.

His eyes lingered on the scar that cut through Noah’s bottom lip and slants down the side of his chin. There were little scars littering his hands, too- burns and cuts from red lyrium when he let red Templars get too close and had to physically defend himself.

Despite his impressive magic, Noah was only an apprentice when the Circles fell, having abandoned the tower when the fighting broke out with nothing but his staff and blue apprentice robes. In the madness of the rebellion he had to fight to survive, and Dorian knew that taking his first life was a horrifying ordeal. Even now Noah would do anything to avoid killing.

But they weren’t killing now. They were hidden from the bureaucrats, and the advisors, tucked into their safe alcove. Noah had picked a book off the shelf and returned to Dorian, settling into the cushioned window seat and extending his legs so they sat in Dorian’s lap.

“What did you find?” Dorian asked, and Noah passed him the tome with a fond smile. It was one of Varric’s serials- “Hard in Hightown,” volume ten. Dorian laughed and arched an eyebrow, and Noah looked sheepish.

“Knight-Commander Augusta used to insist that our Circle library had more than magic books. I never got to finish the series,” he explained. Dorian cracked it open. Noah was already leaning his head back, eyes tracing the designs on the ceiling.

“We’ll have to remedy that.” He began to read.  

**Author's Note:**

> Hey so I wasn't sure how to end this thing so you get that shitty little last line there, because this piece is actually three years old and I'm too lazy to add to it.


End file.
